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There was nothing left inside him. There was nothing left outside him. Everything was gone. His whole family had been blasted into a bloody ruin of flesh and bone. Better to die with them than to live on with the pain of the loss. He squeezed his tear-filled eyes shut, the rushing crackle of flames filling his ears. In his mind’s eye, he saw his father’s monstrously blank face peering over the gun sight. ‘Come on!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Kill me! Kill me and get this over with!’
    As if in response, a barely audible groan came to his ears. He snapped his eyes open, half expecting to see his dad risen from the dead like some horror movie bogeyman to finish him off. His dad wasn’t there, but what he did see astonished him almost as much. Charlotte was twitching as if an electric current was being passed through her. She was alive! It seemed impossible. The top left quarter of her skull was gone. But there was no denying what he saw. Suddenly his survival instinct kicked in again, ordering him to get up and help his sister. Slowly, painfully, he obeyed.
    Mark hooked his good arm around Charlotte. She was a slim little thing, but her limp body seemed as heavy as a sandbag. His breath coming in agonised gasps, he somehow managed to lift her and carry her towards the back door. Halfway there, his injured leg buckled. As he fell, he twisted his body between the floor and Charlotte. He cradled her head against his chest, taking care not to touch her wound. He lay for a moment trying to catch his breath, but his lungs seemed reluctant to inflate. He tried to get up, but was too weak. He saw that the fire had broken through the door. Tongues of flame were leaping into the room. Smoke swept like storm clouds across the ceiling. There was maybe a minute, maybe only seconds left before it would light up Charlotte’s petrol-soaked body like a struck match.
    ‘No.’ The word hissed through Mark’s gritted teeth. He clawed at the floor, dragging himself and his sister centimetre by centimetre towards the back door. He didn’t know what had driven his dad to murderous insanity. And at that moment, he didn’t care. All he cared about was making sure his dad didn’t achieve what he’d planned. Even in the midst of all that agony and anguish, it lent him a perverse kind of strength to think that he would be depriving the bastard of his final gesture of power over his family.
    Grunting and spitting with the effort, Mark grasped the door handle and hauled himself upright. As he opened the door, the heat of the fire sucked the cool night air into the house. The influx of oxygen made the flames momentarily shrink. Then they roared up fiercer than ever.
    Mark knew there was no time to be gentle with Charlotte. He grabbed her arm and dragged her outside. They were about five metres from the house when the petrol ignited. The windows blew out, showering them with glass, knocking Mark off his feet. This time, as he lay fighting to hold on to consciousness, he knew he wouldn’t be getting up again. He barely had sufficient strength to take out his mobile phone, dial 999 and murmur the address to the operator. He let his head roll towards Charlotte. His lips formed faltering words. ‘Hold on, sis… Don’t… die.’

4
    The mobile phone’s ringtone wormed its way into Jim Monahan’s sleeping mind. With a phlegmy grunt, he switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the phone. Seeing Amy Sheridan’s name, he put the receiver to his ear and asked in a rasping, smoker’s voice, ‘What’s the crack, Amy?’ Even before she replied, he knew it had to be something big for her to disturb him when he was off duty.
    ‘We’ve got a multiple shooting.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘A house just off the Ringinglow Road. Out towards Hathersage.’
    A veteran of over three decades’ service, Jim wasn’t easily surprised, but his eyes widened a little. He’d been expecting Amy to say the Manor or the Wicker or one of the other inner-city areas